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Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

So I've been having a lot of trouble with my Nay exercises, and whenever I try to do the whiny sound, it comes off as really scratchy and breaks very easily. So I did a bit of researching and found a video on Youtube that said to try pinching your nose while doing the exercise?

I did it and unlike before, I feel the sound coming from the back of my head (although the sound isn't very strong).

Is this a good method to improve my nays?

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2012-01-27 07:40:36

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

My "Nays" tend to break when I'm pushing chest too much. They may also sound quite whiney if you transfer too much of the resonance into your nasal passage/mask. The "N" sound itself is enough to get that higher resonance sound. As for pinching the nose; I have no idea whether that is a useful method, however, by doing that, you will hear the sound very differently within your own head. Whether this translates outwards again, I don't know. when I pinch my nose, the resonance seems more nasal because the nasal passage is being cut off.. whether this is a good thing or not, I'm unsure.

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

My understanding is that pinching the nose is sort of a check on making sure your soft palette is lifted; the tone shouldn't be dramatically different from the non-pinched-nostril tone. Of course the tone will stop during 'n,' 'm,' and 'ng' sounds, so the 'n' in 'nay' will sound blocked, but the 'ay' should be nice and non-nasal sounding.

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

mjgp3 wrote:

My understanding is that pinching the nose is sort of a check on making sure your soft palette is lifted; the tone shouldn't be dramatically different from the non-pinched-nostril tone. Of course the tone will stop during 'n,' 'm,' and 'ng' sounds, so the 'n' in 'nay' will sound blocked, but the 'ay' should be nice and non-nasal sounding.

Agreed.

Kind of a nasality check

In some cases it works nice if you go full nasal, pinch the nose and just remove the pressure from it keeping the voice high. Its a way to find a higher placement if everything else fails. But the result is usually to high to be used, fine ajustments are needed.

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

remember one important thing about nays, mays, all of those pharygeal exercises. i was just talking to my friend about this. don't take them beyond the first break and resist raising the larynx. these done wrong can do more harm than good.

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

VIDEOHERE wrote:

remember one important thing about nays, mays, all of those pharygeal exercises. i was just talking to my friend about this. don't take them beyond the first break and resist raising the larynx. these done wrong can do more harm than good.

That's weird - when I had an SLS teacher they told me that the point of nays was to help you get through the first break, and that they were one of the few exercises where it was OK for the larynx to rise.

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

yeah... i also just saw a video about ur larynx being raised when doing nay exercises

anyways... the pinching of the nose is not all throughout, i pinch and let go throughout the exercise, so whenever i lose that nasal sound i just pinch for a second to get that feeling back. so far, i think its doing a real great job for me and it might possibly be my breakthrough!

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

steve95 wrote:

yeah... i also just saw a video about ur larynx being raised when doing nay exercises

anyways... the pinching of the nose is not all throughout, i pinch and let go throughout the exercise, so whenever i lose that nasal sound i just pinch for a second to get that feeling back. so far, i think its doing a real great job for me and it might possibly be my breakthrough!

Does not sound like a good idea to me, nasal is not the answer. Do take your time and try to understand better what you are doing. GL.

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

It's impossible to pinch your nose and create an "N" sound since air must be going through the nose, so in the pinched nose case you are really just saying 'ay' with the tongue obstructing the airflow for an instant by making a seal against the roof of the mouth. If you listen closely, you are actually making a very soft 'T' or 'D' at the start of every sound (it's so light it's hard to tell exactly which it is), because this is exactly how a 'T' and 'D' sound is produced in the mouth. So the resulting exercise you are describing could actually be described as 'tays' or 'days' with very soft onsets. In fact, if you do the same exercise just saying "tay" or "day" with the lightest 't/d's possible, it should feel very similar as the pinched nose 'nays'.

This kind of changes the exercise because normally the N is there as a semi-occluded vowel which voice researchers believe helps set the cords better by creating some light back pressure (see the Ingo Titze interview). When you pinch and seal the mouth with the tongue, you are completely blocking the airflow. The effect is actually more similar to the GUG or BUB exercises because airflow is completely blocked and pressure builds up and releases directly into the open vowel as soon as the G or the completely sealed of N is released. So it's like a gug but you are using a combination of the fingers and tongue to block and release air instead of your throat in the gug.

I can see how this could be helpful since a common problem with gugs is that they tighten your throat since you are constricting every time, whereas with pinched nosed nays you are using an unrelated body part to provide the temporary constriction, which is an interesting idea. While trying this I notice my cords thin and correctly set more naturally on the nays. My best guess is that N is a relatively 'open' semi-occluded sound (compared to others that build up more pressure like Z, S, V, etc), so the pinching, by giving more backpressure, strengthens the benefits of these more 'closed' semi-occluded sounds or fully occluded sounds like G and B. I like this variation since it combines the higher backpressure of B's and G's with the high resonance of Nays (bubs and gugs always seem to get me stuck in chest). I think if you can do the pinched nose Nay (or 'soft t Tays') and then the regular Nay with the exact same ease and connection then you are on the right track, and you should always work on both because you can't be pinching your nose all the time when singing.

An idea to play with this further would be to vary how much you pinch your nose on the N. This would be akin to varying how tightly you close the front of your mouth when creating a V or Z.

Re: Pinching the nose while doing nay exercises?

the youtube video was just a simple explanation of the nayssomething like what brett manning would have explained in his vocal tip videoshe just said that if you were having trouble doing the nays, you could pinch your nose while you were doing the exercise.

i noticed that pinching the nose all throughout the scale wouldn't be proper. so what i did was i made the "n" sound without my nose plugged then when i got to the "ay" i pinched my nose for a slight second and let go. I think this sends the voice to a proper area and I think it really helped with my disconnects and things like that (sorry, i'm not familiar with technical terms).